


Up In Smoke

by cihojuda



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Fireworks, Gen, Introspection, Kravitz Backstory (The Adventure Zone), Male Friendship, Memories, More Serious Than It Sounds, Nostalgia, Post-Canon, Sappy, Smoking, not slash but you can read it that way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:21:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29548548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cihojuda/pseuds/cihojuda
Summary: Kravitz suddenly shows up smoking a pipe during the midsummer fireworks and Magnus wants to find out why.
Relationships: Magnus Burnsides & Kravitz
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Up In Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> TW for smoking in here, obviously.

The Midsummer festival was a sight to behold in Bottlenose Cove. Each year, the whole town came together to put together a massive party along the beach. It was a chance for almost everyone to take the day off, for local artists to set up shop on the docks, and for Merle Highchurch to flex how much better the town was doing since Lord Artemis Sterling had put him in charge. Nevermind the fact that it had been doing  _ mostly  _ fine before he showed up.

It was here where the rest of the Starblaster crew- plus a few assorted hangers-on- found themselves now. The day and the festival were coming to a close, and the annual midnight fireworks display was drawing ever nearer. The group had made the trek up to Merle’s house on the hill overlooking the town to have a private place to watch the sky away from the starstruck locals. As nice as it was to be recognized, it was even nicer to act like a normal person for a while. Plus, Merle’s house had non-public toilets and a gate that locked.

As it got closer to midnight, everyone gathered on the porch; getting comfortable on every available surface. The atmosphere was calm and easy-going even though Taako was still pointedly ignoring Lucretia’s presence. Angus was half-heartedly flipping between pages of a Caleb Cleveland novel, Mavis and Carey were eating cotton candy, and everyone seemed content to sit in the dark and wait for the show.

Kravitz was the last one to join them. He emerged from the house with a small silver box in his hand, from which he pulled something and asked:

“Does anyone mind if I smoke?”

All heads swiveled in his direction. A few members of the group looked momentarily confused, but only Merle spoke up.

“Cigarettes or wacky weed?”

“Neither. Pipe tobacco, actually.”

The dwarf smirked. “Aw hell, Krav, if that ain’t like you I dunno what is.” He waved dismissively. “Sure, sure, go ahead. Just keep your matches under control; I don’t want you killin’ my rose bushes.”

Kravitz took a place next to Magnus at the porch railing. The two nodded at each other silently, and Kravitz began methodically packing the bowl of his pipe with tobacco. As the first fireworks screamed into the air, he took his first pull from the pipe and exhaled a cloud of pungent smoke; looking up at the sky pensively. There was a resounding  _ BOOM _ and his face was lit up in blue, pink and green. The light shot right through the smoke, illuminating it from the inside out. It sparkled off of the decorations in the reaper’s dreadlocks and threw the high, sharp angles of his cheekbones into sharp relief.

_ Holy shit,  _ Magnus thought, not for the first time,  _ Kravitz is hot. _

The fireworks kept sailing overhead. Magnus kept one eye on the sky and one eye on Kravitz. He seemed to be thinking about something, not paying attention to what was actually going on. Magnus had never seen his friend be so absent from a situation. It was like his head was on a completely different planet- and like hey, listen, Magnus could relate. About a hundred times over. But as far as he knew, this was unusual for Kravitz. The reaper was a thoughtful person, to be sure, but not to the point of distraction.

There came another cluster of fireworks.  _ Boom! Boom! Ba-boom!  _ Followed by the sizzling of sparks. As the sky lit up again, Magnus caught sight of a silver inlaid band circling the bowl of Kravitz’s pipe. It had some sort of script written on it that he couldn’t quite make out. It looked old, if that was anything to go by; but Magnus was kind of shit with languages, and also he was a human, and humans thought a hundred years was old. So that didn’t get him anywhere.

Kravitz tapped his pipe on the railing to get rid of the spent tobacco. Magnus caught him looking at the writing for a moment as he reloaded. It looked like it could be important, but Magnus couldn’t tell. It could have just been a brand logo for all he knew. Kravitz was, apparently, older than him by an  _ unfathomable _ amount; so who knew the kinds of shit he’d collected working for the Raven Queen over the years?

The finale of the fireworks display concluded in the traditional way-over-the-top fashion: setting off everything that was left over all at once. It was loud, bright and confusing; a cacophony of explosions and excited screams at the chaotic display of a thousand colored streaks of light. But then it was over. The shape of the fireworks that had been burned into everyone’s vision started to fade, and everyone on the porch eventually started trickling away into the air conditioned house. Everything suddenly seemed very, very quiet.

Kravitz blew another smoke cloud out over Merle’s rose bushes.

“So,” Magnus asked him, leaning on the railing and lacing his fingers together. “You wanna talk about it?”

“I… don’t think there’s very much to talk about, Magnus.”

“I wanna hear whatever there is.” The fighter shrugged. “Listen, you barely paid attention to the fireworks. And I’ve  _ never  _ seen you smoke before. Either something’s going on with you or you’re not actually Kravitz. I don’t wanna grill you, but I also don’t really wanna fight you, either. You’re my bud.”

Kravitz gave a short, breathy laugh. “Al-alright. I guess I do owe you some explanation.” He turned the pipe over in his hands. Him and Magnus were alone on the porch, backlit from the windows into the house’s overly-fancy foyer. It was just enough to make out the symbols inlaid on the pipe’s bowl. Kravitz said, “I… This- this was… My father smoked a pipe.”

_ Oh shit.  _ Magnus nodded for him to keep going.

“The-the memories are quite, well, they’re smoky; to be honest with you. You have to understand, Magnus, it’s been so horrifically long. I do this when I’m feeling particularly sentimental. When I want to- to feel closer to what little memory I have of my parents.”

Magnus nodded again. “Yeah. I get that.” He reached into his shirt, pulling out the necklace where he wore Julia’s wedding ring and rubbing the leather strap between his thumb and forefinger.

“Sometimes I envy mortals,” said Kravitz sadly. “After I died, I was almost immediately called into the service of the Raven Queen; but for a long time after that I just sort of existed as an amorphous blob of consciousness that She could call on when I was needed. I didn’t exist as this- this version of myself for long periods of time until a few hundred years ago, at most. I didn’t have the same time to grieve for my family that my family had for me.” He tilted his head to one side, but didn’t make eye contact with Magnus. “I lost a lot of my mortal memories when I was in that state. And it’s hard- Magnus, it’s so  _ hard  _ sometimes to fill in the gaps of what I do and don’t remember.” Kravitz squinted at the rose bushes and his grip tightened on the stem of the pipe. “My mother, she… was a harsh woman. She never approved of me wanting to play for the orchestra. My father was distant, but he supported me. I used to play for him while he sat by the fire and smoked every night.” He extended his hands slightly towards Magnus. “My father’s pipe looked just like this. It  _ smelled  _ just like this. These runes here, they’re the only thing that’s different.” Kravitz ran a finger over the silver band. “Tobacco doesn’t affect this body; but when I hold the pipe, I can almost imagine that I’m seeing my Papa again.”

It was quiet for a few seconds.

“I think,” said Magnus, “that I’m one of the only people in the universe who can say this, but I totally understand what you’re going through.” He looked up at the sky, the stars now visible with no fireworks going off. He was still holding on to his necklace. “When we, um, when we left home, I had this stash of candy from a shop on Main Street, near my parents’ house. I didn’t know it would be the last thing from there I ever ate. I tried to make it last as long as I could, but I just couldn’t stop myself from eating it because it was one of the last things I had to remind me of what home was really like. Nobody I’ve ever met has ever been able to exactly recreate that flavor, but there’s this place in Rockport that gets  _ so close _ . I go there sometimes when I get real sad.” Magnus nudged Kravitz with his shoulder. “You’re from a completely different time and I’m from a completely different reality. I think we deserve a little piece of home every now and then.”

Kravitz chuckled. “Look at us two. Just a couple of sentimental goobuses, huh?” Magnus smiled back at him, and they stood for a moment in companionable silence.

“We should go inside.”

“Yeah, we should.”

A cricket in the rose bushes started to chirp shrilly. Kravitz and Magnus didn’t move. Both stayed leaning on the railing, looking but not looking out into the night sky.


End file.
